first-time home owner, business owner, parent...

Creating and Living With an Unfinished Gallery Wall

When you first move into a new space, there’s always the room that gets left behind. When we moved into our new place in April, we were days away from welcoming twins, so we finished the nursery first. It’s the only room in the house that is currently complete. We’ve made some serious headway on the other open living spaces, like the living room and dining room.

Our master bedroom, however, has been left behind. We talk about what we’re going to do up there. But, right now it’s just so blah, boring and sad. We recently moved the bed, traded and changed out some nightstands and bought some new bedding, but we have a long, long, LONG way to go.

With a new home, wedding and the welcoming of our twin baby girls, we’ve had quite the year and we have a ton of photos to show for it. So, one project I’ve been dying to tackle is a gallery wall.

But gallery walls can get expensive real fast, even if you use cheaper frames. I did some minor measurements and planned the wall in my head, but I knew that it would be a work in progress none-the-less.

On a recent trip to Atlanta, we decided to pop into Ikea and I loaded up on some black Ribba frames in various shapes and sizes; 19 in total. YIKES!!!

Once we had all our frames, it was time to pick out photos to print. I wanted them to be a mix of formal and day-in-the-life photos, with a mix of people and scenery {more heavy on the people}. Our favorite wedding photo was an obvious choice, along with some great iPhone photos we have of the girls {I take about 100 photos a day of my daughters…it’s a sickness}. I printed our photos using Costco and PostalPix {because I had a discount code}.

And then they sat on the floor in our room for about 5 weeks…

When it came time to hanging, I used a very technical system. I eyeballed my placement and then used a large piece of cardboard to measure equal distance between frames. I did pull out the measuring tape from time to time in order to measure inconsistencies in hanging mechanisms.

Believe it or not, there is a pattern forming here…

It’s great for now, because it looks like it could be complete, so I can stomach it until it actually is complete, but it allows for me to add a handful of additional frames over the next few months, year…three years, you know how it goes sometimes.

Looking at these photos now makes me so happy…and also sad. That beige wall color has got to go!

3 days agoby jillianizeThis little girl has so much love to give. She is compassionate, kind, and incredibly patient (which is a blessing with such a headstrong twin sister). Officially, she is the oldest of our brood. She's a great "big" sister and I'm confident that she'll be an equally as amazing bigger sister as well! #bigsister#oldesttwin#ilikesmallwaves#beachbumpin

4 days agoby jillianize#Repost@womensmarch ( @get_repost ) ・・・ Today's #SignOfResistance is a reminder of who we are. Artwork by @tlynnfaz . Photo via @jillyaintfromphilly . • [IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A black and white photo of street art on a wall reads "America is black." Below the word "black" is a bold black line. Below that are 9 rows of text reading "it is native, it wears a hijab, it is a Spanish speaking tongue, it is migrant, it is queer, it is a woman, it is here, has been here." Below that is a bold black line. Below the line in bold black lettering reads "and it's…

3 weeks agoby jillianizeI should be finishing our P&L, booking our summer festival travel, running payroll, or (let's be honest) taking a nap, but sometimes banging down a wall (that's been plaguing your site lines since you moved in) is just the thing you need to get your work mojo back. Now onto those quarterly taxes... #smallbusinessowner